When the commissioner sat the following morning at breakfast with his
betrothed, after having been received without comment as the future
son-in-law, he felt again the combined impression of a great calm at
having been received in a little circle, where common interests formed
a tie to unbounded confidence; and at the same time an anxiety over the
necessity of giving himself up for these manifold considerations which
sympathy and relationship bring. The past evening had rushed into his
life mixing great and small, as life offers it, his whole history of
love, which he had dreamed of with open eyes, had passed with his eyes
purposely blindfolded. He had closed his eyes to the girl's pretended
or imaginary illness; closed them completely, so that he had deceived
himself into taking it seriously; for if he had not done so, and
instead had said plainly from the first moment: rise up and be well,
you are only sick in imagination, then she would have hated him for
life; and his aim was to win her love. Now he had gained her love,
perhaps because she believed that she had deluded him; therefore his
love stood in direct relation to his credulity; and when now in the
morning he repeated to himself again and again the question: Do you
believe in your Mary? his rested reason translated it thus: Am I sure
I can delude you? No, there does not exist a love with open eyes; and
to gain a woman by frankness is impossible; to approach her with raised
head, and with plain words is to drive her away. He had begun with lies
and must go on with dissembling. However, now while the conversation
drifted between trifling things and effusive expressions of feelings,
it gave no time for worry, and the pleasure of being in a home between
two women made everything so bright and soft, that he delivered himself
up to the enjoyment of being the petted one, the child, the little one,
the son of the mother-in-law; and he did not observe that the daughter,
who had already outgrown her mother, treating her as though she the
mother was her child, by simple syllogism gradually took authority
over him, who called her equal "mother-in-law." It amused him, this
reversing of nature's order, and he had always before him the image of
the giant, who let the children pull out three hairs from his beard,
but only three. As they were sitting at their coffee and chatting,
there was heard a murmuring from the people down on the beach.
From the window they saw them gathered on the landings, sometimes
standing immovable, with hands shading their eyes: sometimes rocking on
both feet, as though the ground was burning beneath them, or as if they
could not stand still from fear.
"It is the miracle!" cried the girl, and hastened out accompanied by
her mother and her betrothed.
Coming out on the slope the ladies stopped as though struck by fright,
when on this clear sunny morning, they saw a corpse-white colossal moon
rising above a graveyard with black cypress, floating on the sea.
The commissioner, who had not calculated the effect at this point
of view, did not see quickly enough the relation of things, and
stood deathly pale from the shock which follows something monstrous
and unexpected in the otherwise law-bound nature. He hastened past
the ladies who stood petrified and unable to move, and came down
to the strand where the people were gathered. In a moment he found
the solution of the riddle. His intended marble palace had become
involuntarily framed between a projecting, rounded cliff on one side
and a pine top on the other, so that the limestone slab showed as a
round circle and, with the two windows which were too faintly painted,
it imitated the map of the moon's disk.
The people who had been posted as to the exact hour when the miracle
would appear, as promised by the commissioner, regarded the approaching
man with frightened but venerating glances and the men contrary to what
had been their habit to him raised their hats and caps.
"Now what do you say about my mirage?" asked he jokingly.
Nobody answered, but the head pilot, who was the most courageous,
pointed northwest towards the heavens, where the real moon was hanging
pale in its first quarter.
The miracle thus was crushing, and the strong impressions which the
two moons had already produced was too deep to be effaced with an
explanation. And when the commissioner made an attempt to the beginning
of which nobody listened and the people stood infatuated just as though
enamored of the fear of the inexplicable, he ceased trying to remove
their belief. He had wished to give them a proof that neither he nor
nature could break laws, and, nevertheless, chance had made him a
wizard.
When he turned back he found his betrothed in an ecstatic state
restrained by her mother, but when he appeared, she freed herself and
falling on her knees she cried with half insane gestures, and words
which seemed to have been borrowed from some spiritualistic circle.
"Mighty spirit, we fear thee! Take away our fear, that we may love
thee!"
The case had already assumed a hazardous turn and the commissioner
tried with all his art to explain the involuntary miracle, but in vain.
The enjoyment of being infatuated, the numbness of fear and, behind it,
the lurking feeling of ambition not to admit the confusion of senses,
had so taken possession of the young girl's mind that no remonstrances
or assurances availed. The mother with her unchanging, even temperament
did not seem to know where she was and had forgotten the whole
phenomenon of nature through her daughter's disquieting behavior.
But now the mass of people on the beach had, through Miss Mary's
cries and gesticulations, turned their attention from the performance
out on the sea towards her, and when they saw the young woman on her
knees before the white dressed man, with his deep dark glances and
bare head, out here on the rock, there must have passed before them
some reminiscences from the Bible history about a young man who did
miracles; for they crowded together in haste and began to whisper,
while at the exhortation of the head pilot one of the women hastened
into the nearest cottage and returned with a three-years-old child
which had a foul ulcer on its cheek.
With the ability to call forth a mirage there should also follow a
supernatural knowledge of healing.
The role which was thrown on the commissioner, began to trouble him
beyond measure, and when he saw the fishing population, pilots and
custom house men, leave their work, and carpenters and finishers leave
the building of the chapel to listen to his words as to prophesies with
miraculous power, he became afraid as though before a power of nature
that he had conjured up, but could not check. The moment, however, had
come when he must express himself exactly, plainly, and turn them away.
"Good people," commenced he. But silently the reflection came: how to
go on, what words to use, when each expression required an explanation
which again presupposed foreknowledge, which was lacking. And during
the second he meditated over the distance that lay between him and
them, he heard steps approaching, and turning around, he saw a man who
resembled an old sailor on his leave.
The man lifted a round felt hat and looked somewhat timorous at first,
but coming nearer he straightened himself up and was just going to say
something, when the commissioner relieved him from his embarrassment by
the question:
"Perhaps you are the Home Mission preacher whom we expect?"
"I am the same!" answered the newcomer.
"Will you not say a few words to the people here, who are in a state
of tumult on account of a phenomenon of nature which they do not wish
to have explained and which I at this moment cannot elucidate"--the
commissioner grasped at this in his eagerness to get out of his false
position.
The preacher at once declared himself prepared. Stroking his long chin
whiskers he took a Bible from his pocket.
When the people saw the black book a tremor passed through them and
some of the men uncovered their heads.
The preacher turned the pages a moment and finally stopped, cleared his
throat and began to read.
"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a
great earthquake; and the sun became black as sack cloth of hair, and
the moon became as blood. And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth,
even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a
mighty wind. And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled
together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men,
and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bond man, and
every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the
mountains. And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide
us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath
of the Lamb. For the great day of His wrath has come; and who shall be
able to stand?"
The commissioner, who at once observed the dangerous turn the affair
had taken, had drawn his betrothed half forcibly from the dangerous
neighborhood, and got her down to the beach so that he could give her
the right views and show, that it was no moon which had fallen from
the heaven, that it was only the Italian landscape he had promised to
arrange for her birthday.
But now it was too late. The girl's inner eye had already seen the
vision in its first form, and the preacher's exciting interpretation
had etched in that first delusion. He had toyed with the spirits of
nature, conjured a foe to help him, as he believed, and then all had
gone over to the foe so that he now stood alone.
While Mary's glances were still riveted to the preacher on the rock, he
turned, as a trial, to the mother and whispered:
"Help us out of this. Follow me out to the skerry and see that it is
only a plaything, a birthday joke."
"I cannot judge in these things," answered the mother, "and will not
judge. But I believe ... that you should be married soon."
It was an advice, sober, prosaic, but from this old lady, who was
herself a mother, it sounded so prudent, especially as it agreed
with his own sharp understanding, he found, however, the explanation
somewhat simplified. And after the hint he had received he went
straight to the girl, and placing his arm round her waist, looked into
her eyes with a smile, which she could not fail to understand, and
kissed her lips.
At the same moment the girl seemed released from the wizard up on the
rock, and without resistance she clung to her friend's arm and followed
him almost dancing to her mother's cottage.
"Thanks," whispered she as she glanced into his eyes, "I thank you that
you--how shall I say it?"
"Delivered you from the hobgoblin," filled in Borg.
"Yes, from the goblins!"
And she turned to look at the passed danger.
"Do not look back!" warned her betrothed as he pulled Mary through the
cottage door, while fragments from the preacher's flow of words were
wafted down to him by the wind.